Eyes Tell Of What's Behind
by Nirav
Summary: Quinn's senior year, in the context of Rachel Berry.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note**: 1) I started this right after _I Am Unicorn_ and was working off of that and the preview for _Asian F_, so the divisive minutea is a result of that (as opposed to the divisive everything else, which comes from my mind). 2) This was intended to be...oh, about 1,000 words initially.

**Other Author's Note:** Somehow, when I posted this the first time, an entire scene at the end got chopped out. Good on me for noticing a week later. I figured since I had to reload the whole thing, I'd just bite the bullet and break it out into six chapters, just for formatting's sake, even though in my head it's still a oneshot.

* * *

><p>Her first rehearsal back in the glee club is almost more uncomfortable than the first week of July, when she took her nose ring and freshly-dyed hair and set off on a carefully planned campaign to take over the disorganized trio of angry girls who had laid claim to the smoking spot beneath the bleachers. Then, she had to pretend that she didn't care for herself; now, she has to pretend that she does.<p>

Mack was the hardest of the skanks to win over, and in the end all it took was a fake ID and helping her lift two bottles of cheap vodka from a liquor store the next town over. Compared to impressing Coach Sylvester enough to make cheer captain as a sophomore—which had involved five AM wind sprints and surviving three weeks on nothing but water and the Sue Sylvester Master Cleanse—Mack is a pushover. Glee, though, is a whole other level of difficult.

The first steps are easy because she's done them before: her mother is more than happy to drop the money to have a blonde daughter again, her old clothes are still hanging in her closet—in a room that was left untouched and unchanged over the summer, partly because she was never there and partly because ever since being allowed back in it, she's been terrified to change anything—and she never really liked the nose ring all that much.

After that, it's intimidating but not impossible to approach the half of the club stuck in Mike's and Mr. Scheu's boot camp. Mercedes is there with open arms—and it takes all of the control Quinn has not to sneer at Mr. Scheu when Mercedes greets her back so happily, because proving his accusations wrong is less important than getting Beth back— and Finn looks happy that she seems less likely to spray him with a fire extinguisher than she had the day before; Mike smiles easily and Kurt giggles, and Puck looks at her with something like approval flickering across his face.

The next day, though, is the challenge. Because in the full club, there's everyone else: Tina and her quite intuition; Brittany, so distant without Santana; and Rachel, who is always so terrifyingly perceptive and obnoxiously persistent. Mr. Scheu announces her return with a smile, as if he hadn't been ripping her a new one less than a week earlier, and she lets herself flush and duck her eyes and murmur something stupid and appropriate just to keep their eyes off of her.

She doesn't know which is harder, just like she doesn't know if it hurts more to look in the mirror and see herself hidden behind a practiced mask of perfection or a calculated façade of apathy. At least this way, she has a chance to get Beth back and fix the worst mistake she ever made.

* * *

><p>She ingratiates herself into the life she had the year before. Coach Sylvester ignores her, but Santana and Brittany welcome her back into the inexplicably solid friendship the three of them had once shared, and less than a week after she rejoins the glee club, she finds herself helping Brittany choreograph a dance number for the upcoming senior class assembly, in support of the other girl's run for class president.<p>

She hates how much she had missed everything that went into being Brittany's friend—the spontaneity, the cheerfulness, the never-ending movement—almost as much as she hates the way Puck is constantly watching her out of the corner of his eye. He hasn't spoken to her since her first rehearsal back, and she does her best to ignore him, because she doesn't _need_ him to get Beth back.

When she takes the lead with Brittany and Santana for the brief second in the performance, when everyone else falls to the floor, she forgets for the most fleeting moment that all of this—the blonde hair, the cardigans and sundresses, the glee club, everything that had made up her old life—is all to get Beth back, and just for that second it feels _fun. _Brittany, even when she's serious, is infectiously happy, and Santana is happy as long as Brittany is happy, and even when her mind is focused on trying to come up with ways to regain custody of her daughter, Quinn finds herself smiling and laughing along with them.

When Mr. Scheu, in all of his usual pretentiousness, gets up to sing after them, she slips away from the crowds and makes her way to an empty spot behind the gym because the last thing she wants to do is listen to him sing Coldplay. She can never smoke at home without her mom knowing and the skanks still lay claim to the bleachers, but there's an alcove where the fencing that rings around the football field meets the emergency exit with the broken alarm, and she can stand there and smoke in peace.

"I thought you quit."

Rachel's voice surprises her, and she almost drops the cigarette. A few flecks of ash flutter down and cling to the hem of her dress, and Quinn stares down at the disinterestedly.

"What are you doing here?" She's avoided Rachel since rejoining the club, even though a conversation seemed inevitable, and she's too tired right now to deal with Rachel's good intentions and earnest eyes.

"Mr. Scheu didn't want backing vocals," Rachel offers as an explanation, and Quinn laughs quietly. Of course he didn't.

Rachel takes her laughter as mockery, and sets her shoulders defiantly, half-glaring at Quinn. "It was supposed to be my song, you know," she says firmly. "I suggested it, I did the instrumentation, but he said that it would be better to have a teacher sing so as not to distract from the other students performing in the pep rally and—"

"That song was your idea?" Quinn looks at her curiously, her practiced mask slipping in surprise, and something about the way Rachel suddenly flushes and looks so terribly uncomfortable makes Quinn feel something in her stomach that she can't quite identify.

"It—felt appropriate," Rachel mumbles, and Quinn can't stop herself from staring, even when Rachel starts to fidget uncomfortably.

"I hope you don't smoke too often," Rachel says quietly after long seconds on the receiving end of Quinn's appraising gaze. "Ideally, not at all, but if you need to then I just hope you don't make a real habit out of it because—"

"It'll hurt my voice, right?" Quinn interrupts. She throws a pointed, exasperated look Rachel's way before inhaling the smoke into her lungs slowly.

"Because it hurts all of you," Rachel says. She sighs, shifting to lean against the cool brick wall at her side. "You looked like you were having fun in there," she adds on after a moment. "With Brittany and Santana."

Quinn shrugs, staring intently down at the cigarette in her hand.

"You didn't used to look like you enjoyed dancing with the Cheerios," Rachel plows on, and Quinn's head snaps up at the words, making Rachel shrink back. "I just mean that you dance like you want to be dancing now, not because you have to. Like you don't care what people think."

The words swirl around and leave her shivering in the silence, and she can't find it in herself to move, except to bring the cigarette back up to her lips.

"You looked happy, is all," Rachel says slowly. "It was a really good performance, everything about it. Everyone really loved it."

"Shouldn't you be angry that Britt's going to beat your new best friend?"

Rachel shrugs neutrally. "I love Kurt and I'd love to see him win, because he'd be good for the school, but he's running for himself. And even if he deserves it, Brittany's running for everyone. As far as I can tell, regardless of which one of them wins, we don't lose."

Quinn wants to roll her eyes and scoff, but just like always, Rachel's honesty is overwhelming, and all she can manage is a slow, measured exhale of smoke. She shifts to the side, leaning back against the wall as well, and stares blankly towards the football field.

"Aren't you going to ask?" she says eventually, slotting a measured look over towards Rachel. "You clearly want to."

"I want to know, but that doesn't mean I want to ask," Rachel says. "I'm glad that you came back to glee, Quinn. I really am, even if I don't know what changed you mind. But when I said 'whenever you're ready', I actually meant it."

She pushes away from the wall and dusts of her hands, staring at Quinn earnestly. "I'll see you in class," she offers, and disappears through the doors. Quinn stares at the spot Rachel had occupied until the remnants of her cigarette burn against her fingers, and she simply stubs it out—against the no smoking sign, just because she can and she misses being able to say she doesn't give a shit— before striding towards her car.

* * *

><p><em>Hi, Beth. I—I'm hoping you know my voice still, but just in case you don't, this is Quinn. I'm your…well, Shelby is your mom, but I'm your birth mom. I had to give you up when you were born, because I couldn't be who you needed me to be, but I've been a part of your life for the last few months now. I hope I still am by the time you're old enough to maybe want to hear this, but if I'm not, I wanted you to have something from now. From when Shelby and me and Puck—Noah—your dad—are all here with you, and we all love you, so much.<em>


	2. Chapter 2

Rachel lasts a full week before finding her in a bathroom—and oh, God, why is it always bathrooms and bleachers and empty auditoriums for them? Rachel never has the upper hand when they're in public, but she somehow seems to tower over Quinn when they're alone—and confronting her.

"You came back to glee," she notes, arms crossed and brow furrowed as she watches from across the room. Quinn stays silent, perfecting her reflection in the mirror, and offers nothing more than a quirk of an eyebrow in acknowledgment because they've done this and she'd believed it when Rachel said _whenever you're ready_.

"I thought you said you weren't going to come back," Rachel continues. Her tone is neutral but her eyes, just barely visible in the mirror over Quinn's shoulder, are wide and uncertain.

"And I thought that you were going to let it go," Quinn says. Her eyes flick momentarily to the side, catching Rachel's in the mirror for a split second. She rocks back on her heels before turning slowly, careful to keep her shoulders back and chin lifted—it worked so much better when she had the protection of a Cheerios uniform, but Rachel still shrinks the tiniest bit back into the door. "Anyways, isn't it what you wanted? For me to come back and round out the numbers in your merry band of misfits so we can all hold hands and compete?"

"I wanted you to not be so sad," Rachel says softly. Her words are honest and heavy, punching into Quinn's stomach like a brick.

"I never said I was sad," she manages to says, her voice wavering audibly, because somehow Rachel always seems to _know_ and part of Quinn hates her for always being right.

"That doesn't matter," Rachel says. She's moving forward, her hands half in front of her, as if she can't decide if approaching a caged animal is a good idea, and Quinn can barely comprehend the movement through the sound of blood rushing through her veins, her body reacting suddenly and violently against her will to the feeling of being trapped. The instinct to run—one she's harnessed and honed and perfected after eighteen years of realizing that fighting never helps—leaves the muscles in her legs tight and shaking, her entire body straining to leave the claustrophobic bathroom.

"What matters is that you _are_, and anyone who's paying attention can see it." Rachel is still talking, her words echoing harshly against the hard walls surrounding them; through the edges of a panic attack, Quinn tries to focus on Rachel's voice as an anchor and wonders desperately if she remembered to grab her inhaler out of her gym bag this morning.

Suddenly, she's sitting on the floor, slumped in a corner with a half-frantic Rachel in front of her and gripping her shoulders. Her chest aches and even though she's sitting, her legs feel rubbery, like she just sprinted the length of a football field; the sharp feeling of Rachel's fingers digging into skin through her sweater is an almost-welcome distraction, and slowly, her breathing evens out and lungs stop burning and heart slows down.

"Are you okay?" Rachel finally ventures, frowning. Her hands are still tight on Quinn's shoulders, and Quinn can't tell if Rachel's shaking as well or if it's just her.

Her mouth is dry and her stomach aches, like it had when she spent a weekend in July trying to inoculate herself against the reek of cigarettes and chainsmoked an entire carton with the skanks on an empty stomach. She opens her mouth to respond, but nothing comes out, and suddenly Rachel is on the other side of the bathroom—it feels so much less constricting than it had just a moment earlier—and retrieving a shockingly pink reusable water bottle. Quinn watches, her head falling back tiredly against the wall, as Rachel fills the bottle at the sink, and wonders if she'll spend the rest of her life confronting Rachel Berry in a bathroom.

When the water bottle is offered to her, she halfheartedly considers blowing Rachel off yet again, but her throat aches and her legs feel too weak to support her storming out, so instead she just accepts the proffered drink and sips slowly from it. Rachel stands uncomfortably in front of her, fidgeting and pulling at the hem of her sweater, until Quinn finally finds it in herself to roll her eyes.

"I'm not going to slap you again," she mutters. "If you want to sit down or something."

Rachel immediately folds her legs under herself, sitting daintily directly on front of her, and stares at Quinn unabashedly. "Should I go get the nurse?"

"I'm fine," Quinn says. She focuses her gaze at the dark denim covering her knees—she spent an hour the night before searching through her closet to find outfits that would let Shelby think that she had found some happy medium between the Celibacy Club and the skanks, and jeans with no holes in them seemed like a good compromise—and tries to pretend that Rachel's stare hasn't always unnerved her.

"You're obviously not, if you're having panic attacks in the school bathrooms."

"I'm fine, Rachel." She hates how tired her voice sounds, but by the time the words are out there's nothing she can do to change it. Rachel looks at her, unwavering and so obnoxiously sympathetic, and suddenly all Quinn can think about is Rachel picking out the song Mr. Scheu took from her for the assembly, and how Rachel never picks a song without at least eighteen reasons, and how Rachel always seems to want to _fix_ things. The thoughts rush around her head and she feels her chest starting to tighten again; she grips the water bottle tightly and hates herself for not having her inhaler.

Silence stretches between them while Quinn tries to will her body into a calmer state, until Rachel blurts out, "Noah called me."

Quinn's jaw clenches involuntarily, and before she can find it in herself to throw the water bottle at Rachel and bolt, the other girl is talking again.

"It's why I had to ask. He said that he went to see Shelby, and he saw Beth, and he wants to be a part of her life. And that you do, too, but he's scared that you're going to mess it up for both of you and—"

"Shut up," Quinn practically growls out. The loud clang of the water bottle slamming against cheap tiles echoes around the room and makes Rachel jump, and anger overrides the weakness in her body and lets Quinn scramble to her feet.

"Quinn, wait," Rachel says, leaping up behind her. "Please, I don't want you to think I agree with him, I just thought—"

"Shut _up_," Quinn hisses, whirling around to face her. Her hands clench into fists at her sides, her arm twitching against the instinct to smash across Rachel's face once more. "You don't know anything."

"That's a lie and you know it," Rachel says, her own stubbornness pushing through the shake in her voice. "You gave your daughter up for adoption and now you want her back, and I'm the only person you know who's actually adopted. I know almost more about it than you do because I've lived the life Beth is facing."

"It's not the same," Quinn says with a sneer. The remnants of her panic attack are gone, a thrill of adrenaline overwhelming everything else as she towers over Rachel. "Shelby didn't fight for you, _Rachel_. I'm nothing like her, because I actually _want _to get my daughter back."

Quinn's stomach twists even more than when she'd slapped Rachel at prom, and she can't tell if it's from the shock on Rachel's face or the nasty voice in the back of her head insisting that she's lying to herself. She freezes her sneer in place and spins on one heel, stalking out of the bathroom alone. The suffocating weight of guilt presses on her chest for the rest of the day, and she wonders bitterly if she's ever going to be as good a person as Rachel can be.

* * *

><p><em>You're the best thing I've ever done in my life, Beth, and I need you to know that. I was sixteen when you were born and I'd already made so many huge mistakes, and I made so many more afterwards, but despite all of that, everything about you was perfect. Is. You're still perfect. No matter what happens in your life, if I'm there or not, whatever other mistakes I might make, or that you might make, I want you to know that. No matter if I'm there when you hear this or not, you have to know that if I'm not, it isn't because you don't mean everything to me.<em>


	3. Chapter 3

She held her daughter for fifteen minutes in the hospital. She meets Beth for the first time a month after she dyed her hair back to blonde and three weeks after she watched tears fill Rachel's eyes in the school bathroom. Puck is there and watching her, his shoulders tight but his hand gentle on her shoulder, when they knock on Shelby's door.

Seconds pass too quickly until the door swings open and Quinn feels like she's going to be sick, because that's _her_ child in Shelby Corcoran's arms, with blonde hair and Puck's smile. The same child that kept her up all night kicking, who craved asparagus and peppermint ice cream, who taught her exactly how much she could throw up before losing her voice, is sleeping peacefully in someone else's arms.

Puck's hand on her shoulder is all that keeps her from slipping into tears or hyperventilation, and she lets him guide her into the house silently. He never lets go of her, and she can feel the uncertainty in his presence behind her. He wants Beth as much as she does, even if he's terrified now of them actually trying to fight for custody.

"Do you want to hold her?" Shelby asks softly. Quinn stands awkwardly by the couch, her eyes glued to a sleepy one year old, drinking in the way Beth's head is drooping into Shelby's shoulder and one hand is curled around the edge of Shelby's collar, the thumb on the other tucked into her mouth.

They've talked about this. Almost every day for the last month. At school, in the parking lot, when Shelby can't stand Sugar Motta's insanity and Quinn wants to slap Mr. Scheu and they've both excused themselves from after school rehearsals. Quinn's learned how much her daughter weighs, that she gravitates towards anything orange but refuses to eat carrots, that she sleeps best when Shelby sits on the floor beside her crib and sing terrible Celine Dion songs to her in the dark.

"Quinn," Shelby says. Puck's hand loosens on her shoulder, and the sudden weight shift draws her back to the present. Shelby is watching her with guarded eyes, and Beth is silent and asleep and _perfect _against her shoulder.

"She's sleeping," Quinn says, her voice coming out tight and heavy and carefully quiet. "I don't want to wake her."

Shelby stares at her critically for long seconds before nodding. "Okay," she says. "I'm going to put her down and we can talk, okay?"

"Yeah," Quinn mumbles, her eyes still locked on Beth's tiny form as Shelby disappears down the hallway to the bedrooms.

Puck moves to stand in front of her, crowding into her personal space. "Whatever you were planning, you scrap it right now," he says lowly. "I want her back as much as you do, but you know that Shelby is better for her than we are and I'm not going to back you up on something that will screw up my daughter's life _and_ get us both kicked out of it."

Quinn stares up at him, waiting for her anger to surface like it always does when Puck and Beth are involved, but all she gets is a fading spark of resentment and self-loathing. She can hear Shelby coming back down the hallway, baby monitor in hand, and she doesn't fight it when Puck grips her arm tight enough to bruise and whispers "It's _done_" in her ear before he moves to sit on the couch.

Shelby reappears and tells her to sit. Her features are sharper than Rachel's but just as kind, and it's almost as terrifying as it always in when Rachel scrutinizes Quinn. Puck tugs on her elbow, pulling her to sit down next to him on the couch, and she watches numbly as Shelby comes back from the kitchen with three bottles of water.

Long, awkward seconds pass in silence before Shelby—and Quinn wants to hug her, to kiss her, to find a way to show how relieved she is that Shelby really is being a great parent to Beth—says "Let's talk about when you guys are going to spend time with her, because I'm big on schedules and I don't do well when things happen outside of my itinerary."

Brilliantly, unexpectedly, it makes Quinn laugh, because it's so _Rachel, _and the knot of guilt that's been tightening in her stomach since the day Beth was born loosens just the slightest bit and her complex plans of custody and attorneys and potential character defamation all fade away when Shelby starts explaining Beth's naptimes and how they can work around school schedules so Quinn and Puck can have time with her.

Somewhere between bargaining for weekend time and Puck cautiously broaching the topic of religion, Quinn irrationally wonders if there's a way to apologize to Rachel without having to speak to her.

* * *

><p>It only takes another week and three more visits with Beth—who is beautiful and happy and so <em>perfect<em>—for Quinn to realize that she really can't follow through with her plan. Because Beth is healthy and happy and safe, and Shelby is older and wiser and so devoted, and Quinn is abruptly smacked in the face with the realization that she'd been right to give Beth up.

She's at Shelby's, laying on her back on the floor with Beth resting on top of her, a tiny blonde head tucked into her shoulder and fingers tangled in the collar of her sweater and Puck watching quietly them from his spot on the carpet in front of the fireplace. Shelby is sitting at the kitchen table, grading papers for whatever random music class it is that she teaches, and she hasn't gotten up to check on Beth in half an hour, and it all feels more like family than she's ever had before. It feels like an epiphany, a sudden stroke of understanding that she'd never experienced before, to realize that taking Beth from Shelby will do nothing but ruin everyone's lives, and slams through her so painfully that her entire body shudders and she suddenly feels nothing but shards of self-loathing for ever contemplating disrupting Beth's life.

A buzzer goes off in the kitchen and Shelby says something about dinner being ready, and Puck is suddenly there, kneeling beside Quinn and easing Beth into his arms before he stands. Cradling her carefully in one arm, he offers a hand down to pull Quinn to her feet, and she accepts it without meaning to.

She stares at Beth's sleeping form, and strokes a hand over soft hair instinctively, and feels her chest tightening.

She mumbles out an excuse to Shelby, kisses Beth gently, and makes her way outside and into her car before scrambling for the spare inhaler she keeps in the console. Seconds slide by as she waits for air to fill her lungs, and she breathes in deeply, allows herself five minutes to recover, and sets off towards home with a new plan forming in her mind.

* * *

><p>Saturday morning, two days after her intentions had so thoroughly been reversed, she walks up to the Berry's front door at nine in the morning and knocks hesitantly.<p>

Rachel answers, her eyes widening at the sight of Quinn on her front porch.

"Hi," Rachel says slowly. "What are you—"

"I need to talk to you," Quinn says. "May I come in?" She doesn't know if she's ever actually _asked _anything of Rachel before, but it's not at all surprising when Rachel opens the door more fully and motions her inside.

They settle in the living room, and Rachel watches her expectantly, quietly, patiently, just like she always has. Quinn inhales slowly, wishing suddenly for a cigarette, before speaking in the most even tone she can manage.

"I want to do something," she says levelly. "For Beth."

"Oh," Rachel breathes out. Her stiff posture relaxes abruptly. "Noah said you've been spending a lot of time with her, though, that things are going well and Shelby loves having you both there—"

"I know," Quinn says, and she winces at how sharp her voice is, and how Rachel's mouth snaps shut. She wonders if being a better person for Beth would involve not interrupting Rachel so often. "Sorry. I just…you're right. He's right. What we're doing, it's…it's working right now. It's good. But there's no guarantee that that won't change, and I want to do something for her, now, so she can have it to look back at."

"Okay," Rachel says cautiously. She hesitates before continuing, as if she expects Quinn to interrupt her again; Quinn can't help the way her eyebrow quirks up and the edge of a smile tugs at one corner of her mouth.

"Okay," Rachel says again. "Do you need my help?"

"I—yes," Quinn says. She pulls a stack of sheet music out of her purse. "I wanted to—Shelby said that she made a tape for you, when you were a baby, and it sounded like I good idea. I was thinking that I could record something for her, so she can listen to it when she's older. But I need help with the arrangement, and I could ask Shelby but I really would rather not, and you said that put together that Coldplay piece for Mr. Scheu at the pep rally, so…"

"Oh, I'd love to!" Rachel practically squeals, and in a flash she's bounced over to where Quinn is sitting and snatched the sheet music. She drops to sit next to Quinn, pressed tightly to her side, and scans over the music and lyrics excitedly. "Oh, Quinn, this is a good choice. A little unexpected, because this isn't the kind of music I thought you liked, but even so, this is a great idea."

She looks up at Quinn, smiling broadly, and Quinn can't help but flush. "It's Puck's fault, he wouldn't turn off that stupid album for like two months when I was living with him."

Rachel laughs softly, her eyes focused back on the sheet music. "I know what you mean," she says. "Finn spent all summer rediscovering Metallica."

Quinn rolls her eyes, scoffing, and pauses at the realization that somehow, Rachel having Finn doesn't hurt anymore.

"So you can do it?"

"Of course," Rachel says. She turns to face Quinn once more, somber once more, and she looks so genuinely excited at the idea that an almost crippling wave of guilt and nausea rushes over Quinn. "I can probably put something together this weekend—I assume you were thinking something simple, a piano accompaniment, since I know you can play— and we can talk to Artie on Monday about using the AV club's equipment to do the recording."

"Thank you," Quinn manages to say, diverting her eyes towards her knees. Swallowing, she pushes herself up to her feet and clutches her purse tightly. "I should go; we're taking Beth to the zoo in Columbus this afternoon so—"

"Of course," Rachel says hurriedly. She leaps to her feet, holding the sheet music tightly to her chest, and leads Quinn back to the front door.

"Thanks, Rachel," Quinn says before stepping outside, and she pauses, wondering if now is a good time to apologize for always being such a terrible person, but it seems like too many steps in too short a time, and she pushes the instinct away.

"I can email something to you tomorrow, if you'd like," Rachel says hesitantly. "To see if I'm on the right track."

"That would be great," Quinn says, and for maybe the first time in her life, it isn't a front when she smiles at Rachel.

She waves awkwardly before hurrying towards her car, and the door is open before she hears her name, tentative, from where Rachel still stands by the front door. Footsteps follow it, and Rachel appears behind her.

"Can I—I just wanted to ask you—"

Quinn turns around warily, fighting the instinct to cross her arms and glare down at Rachel, because she _needs _Rachel to make this work; even if she didn't, she's tired of fighting with the other girl, tired of hating her, tired of all of it.

Rachel takes a deep breath before speaking again. "Is Shelby… is she good? To Beth. Is she a good mom?" she asks quietly.

The question is just as surprising as it is expected, and Quinn almost panics, not knowing if she wants to lie and say that Rachel isn't missing anything because Shelby is terrible, or lie and say that Shelby is perfect. Instead, she settles for the truth, because lying takes so much more effort and she's just so tired of being tired.

"She's good, yeah," Quinn says, her voice soft. "She's not perfect, but she loves Beth and she—Beth is her number one priority and Shelby wants what's best for her."

Rachel nods, her face crumpling momentarily before a tight smile is hitched up. "I'm really happy she's taking care of Beth," Rachel says, and the sincerity is there even through obvious pain, and Quinn wonders in a split second what it would be like to jump on the weakness and try to _fix_ it for once.

Instead, she hesitates, and it's not until Rachel is halfway back to the door that she darts after her, fingers wrapping around Rachel's elbow tightly. "Rachel, wait," she says. She bites down on her lip, trying to find the words she wants to say, before plowing ahead. "Shelby's great, yeah, but she wouldn't have been for you. She was me, and she's only as good a parent as she is now because she's spent so long hating herself for not being one for you."

Rachel is silent, her chin trembling the tiniest bit, and all of the sudden she's dropped the sheet music and has thrown her arms around Quinn, hugging her so tightly that Quinn's ribs ache.

"Thank you, Rachel whispers, her chin pressing into Quinn's shoulder. "Thank you."

Hesitantly, Quinn lets herself return the hug. It feels as comforting as Santana's and Brittany's embrace in New York, and she can't even being to understand why.

* * *

><p><em>The day Shelby came back to town with you, the first time I saw your picture, I—I wanted you back. I was in a really terrible place because I hated myself for not being good enough to keep you and all of the bad decisions I'd made, both before and after you were born, and I wanted you back more than I'd wanted anything. Shelby, I guess you might be hearing this as well, and if I haven't told you by now, I'm sorry for ever thinking about trying to take her from you. Even if I never would have succeeded, I think you probably understand how I felt. <em>


	4. Chapter 4

Rachel emails her three different piano arrangements after dinner the next night with an mp3 recording of her playing each one on the piano in the Berry's basement, and Quinn brushes off her mother's questions so she can lock herself in her room and listen to Rachel Berry's piano interpretations of a Sum 41 song on repeat.

Even though all she has is the audio of the piano and Rachel's notations on how to rework for her vocal range—neatly inked into the margins of the sheet music and scanned as a PDF to accompany each mp3 file—she can all but hear the words anyways. The first one makes her chest hurt, the second one makes her throat constrict, and the last one breaks her resolve and leaves yet another panic attack pushing her chest in on itself.

She's digging through her purse to find her inhaler—she really needs to have at least three at any given time, but to ask her mother to pay for them, even with insurance, is another weakness she refuses to allow herself—and gasping for breath when her phone rings. Rachel's number flashes on the screen, and even as she's grasping the inhaler and greedily sucking air into her lungs after two hits, she answers without really thinking about it.

"Are you alright?" Rachel asks almost immediately, and as her heartbeat starts to slow down, Quinn almost smiles at the crease she can practically feel appearing in Rachel's brow at the sound of Quinn's labored breathing.

"I'm fine," she lies. "I was doing yoga, and the phone was on the other side of the room."

"Oh," Rachel says slowly. "I don't think I ever pictured you as a fan of yoga."

"Really," Quinn drawls. It's always easier to be aloof with Rachel, because the moment she stops, the other girl is pushing past her defenses and seeing things that no one is meant to see. Quinn holds the phone away from her mouth long enough to take in and release a single, long breath, and brings it back to speak again. "Why's that?"

"I don't know," Rachel says. She's relaxing, just the tiniest bit, her voice loosening in response to Quinn not snapping at her. "I suppose I thought that you would have carried your habits from the Cheerios over, and continued with running and weight training."

"I did. But we did yoga, too," Quinn says. "For flexibility. We did a little bit of everything. Whatever struck her mood that day, I guess."

"That makes sense," Rachel says. "I—did you get a chance to review my email?"

"Yeah," Quinn says quietly. "I—they're good. Really good." Her throat dries up, and she grips onto the inhaler still wrapped in her fingers.

"I can rework some parts, if you want," Rachel offers. "And I know you were initially thinking just a piano, but given the source material, it might work better with an acoustic guitar than a piano. I don't have as much experience with string instruments, but I can rewrite it and maybe Noah can play—"

"No!" Quinn says sharply, cutting her off. She winces at the audible clack of Rachel's teeth coming together. "I'm sorry, I just—I want this to be from me. If he wants, we can do something together, but—I have to give her something from _me_." There's a desperate edge to her voice that she can't control, and her eyes squeeze shut as her hand clenches so tightly at the inhaler that the plastic starts to creak. It's easier to break her inhaler than to admit to Rachel Berry that somehow the world is convoluted and Noah Puckerman is the kind of parent who will always be in his daughter's life when she's the uncertainty, the screw-up, the one who will probably have to fade into the background.

"Okay," Rachel says. "Of course. If you want to consider the guitar, I'm somewhat adept. I'm not as good as Noah or Artie, but it's still an option."

"Okay," Quinn mumbles. Memories of afternoons and evenings with Sam spin through her mind, as he laughed while she fumbled impatiently with his guitar, and she tries to swallow around the lump in her throat. Her eyes fall on the stack of scholarship applications building up on her desk, and it hurts to look at them but less so than it does to think about Sam or Beth or Shelby or Puck or Finn, so she latches her eyes onto them and forces herself to start reciting application deadlines in her head to fill up the silence over the phone.

Awkward seconds pass before Rachel speaks again. "Quinn, I…" she starts. "May I ask you something?"

"I'm sure you will anyways," Quinn says; for once, it comes out teasing instead of cutting, but tinged with exhaustion as always. She looks away from the applications on her desk and closes her eyes, focusing her attention on her posture. Back straight, shoulders back, chin lifted. For the quickest of passing moments, as her spine stiffens and her body aligns itself perfectly, everything feels right in the world.

"Why did you ask me?" Rachel asks. "I know that I have more training than the rest of the club, but you've played piano for as long as I've known you, and Artie could have helped you with an acoustic arrangement, or Sam—"

"How do you know I still talk to Sam?" The mention of his name startles Quinn out of her fatigue, her eyes flashing open and narrowing into a glare, even if Rachel can't see it.

"I—sent him an email before school started," Rachel says hesitantly. It sounds like a question more than a statement. "Mercedes told me he was moving, and I wanted to wish him luck and encourage him to keep playing music and stay in touch, and— and to ask if…if maybe he knew where you had disappeared to." Her voice is soft, almost inaudible, by the end of the sentence, leaving Quinn straining to hear it.

"Why?" It comes out sounding strangled even to her own ears, and Quinn's fingers twitch to turn the phone off and to stop letting Rachel keep backing her into corners.

"I was concerned," Rachel says, her voice still hesitant. "You disappeared, Quinn. I know we weren't ever close, but I still always saw you around town during vacations, but you were _gone_. I saw your mother around, and Brittany and Santana, but I never saw _you_ and for all that I knew, you'd run off to join a nomadic cult of fire worshippers."

Quinn snorts, rolling her eyes. "Nomadic fire worshippers? Really?"

"Well, given that you returned with a hideous tattoo and pink hair and dating some gross older man, it seems that my concern was legitimate," Rachel says tartly. Unexpectedly, it draws a genuine laugh out of Quinn.

"The tattoo was some henna knockoff, and I never _dated_ that guy," she said simply. "He was one of Mack's conquests and I didn't care enough to correct anyone when they started thinking I was sleeping with him."

"But…why not?" Rachel half-whispers. "That's so unlike you, to not care."

"Is it really?" Quinn asks, her voice suddenly tired and heavy again.

Rachel is silent for a long while, and Quinn fidgets uncomfortably. Looking down at her knees, she's surprised to see that she's released her death grip on the inhaler and her fingers are wrapped loosely around it, her hand resting listlessly atop her leg.

"So why did you come to me?" Rachel asks again.

Quinn sighs, rubbing a hand over her eyes and falling onto her back on the mattress. "I—I don't know, Rachel," she says. "Because you're the most talented person in this whole town. Because I knew you wouldn't say no. Because—"

"Because I wanted Shelby to be a part of my life as desperately as you want to be a part of Beth's," Rachel finishes softly.

Quinn stares at the white ceiling above her, eyes taking in the edges of shadow beginning to stretch across from the setting sun. "Yeah," she says finally.

"Can I ask you another question?"

"You just did," Quinn says drolly.

"Why are you so concerned with doing this?" Rachel asks tentatively. "You're already a part of her life, you've given her so much, so why is this so important?"

Quinn's eyes drift shut once more, and pictures of Beth flash behind them as she weighs her options. Anger and sarcasm push to the forefront, as they always do, but the thought of summoning the energy to be mean to Rachel is tiring just to think about. She could just hang up, but she needs to stay on Rachel's good side.

Finally, she simply sighs and opens her eyes again. "Because everything ends eventually," she says. "Because nothing lasts, and because I want her to have something from when I wasn't screwing up her life so she can know that I tried."

Rachel is silent on the other end of the phone, and for the first time in her life, Quinn wishes the other girl would _talk_ and spout her usual nonsense about Quinn's potential, or even just call her pretty one more time, because even Rachel's blind naïveté would be more welcome than the dead silence of unwitting agreement.

"I'll talk to Artie tomorrow," Quinn finally says heavily. "And I can rework anything that needs to be finished on the arrangement. Thanks for getting me started."

"Quinn, wait, please," Rachel says quickly. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked, it's none of my business. And I won't bother you about it anymore if you don't want to, because I told you that I'd wait until whenever you were ready and I meant that. But I just—thank you. For being honest with me."

"Who says I was being honest?"

"You sound too tired to be lying," Rachel says simply. "Good night, Quinn. I'll see you in school tomorrow."

"Bye," Quinn says automatically, almost too late, as the calls ends. She sits on the foot of her bed, staring down at the inhaler in her hand, until the sun sets the rest of the way and Santana calls her about another strategy meeting for Brittany's campaign.

* * *

><p>Monday comes and goes, as it always has since she rejoined glee, with her latched to Brittany's side during rehearsal and Rachel curled in under Finn's arm. Quinn ignores the majority of Mr. Scheu's lesson, as always, eyes scanning slowly over the sheet music she'd printed off with Rachel's notes as he goes on about choreography. Rachel has been silent but cordial all day, offering naught but a polite smile and wave when they passed in the halls or shared a class together, and it feels as comforting as the knowledge that she's back to a functioning trio of friendship with Brittany and Santana, even if she can't bring herself to contemplate why she always—<em>always<em>—waits for Rachel to make the first move.

Wednesday, when Brittany and Santana are off supposedly making campaign posters—Quinn knows that glint in Brittany's eyes, the one that means she's about to drag Santana into the storage closet in the Cheerios' locker room—Quinn makes her way to the empty auditorium and the piano on its stage to work on her song. She feels tiny and alone in the empty cavern of the huge room, with its vaulted ceilings and the orchestra pit echoing under her footsteps; it all feels fitting, because if there's one thing she's understanding now it's that with Beth in the world, Quinn really _doesn't_ matter, and for the first time in her life, not mattering doesn't hurt so much.

She's on her third run through when she falters going from the bridge into the final run of the chorus, her fingers slipping off the keys listlessly. Her shoulders slump forwards, chin falling towards her chest, and she wonders if it would be okay to just put her head down on the piano and _sleep_.

"It sounds really good."

Rachel's voice startles her momentarily, just enough for her eyes to pop open, and she sits up slowly to look towards the wings, to where Rachel is standing. The situation is blindingly familiar for a moment, and Quinn wonders if history is going to repeat itself, even if everything has changed from then.

"You took it down an octave," Rachel continues on, moving closer and pausing beside the piano.

"I don't have your range," Quinn says simply. "Only Mercedes does." She pauses, staring up at Rachel, before deciding that it's too much effort to try and be distant right now. Tiredly, she moves to gather the extra sheet music scattered on the bench next to her, offering the spot for Rachel to sit.

With a small smile, Rachel slides onto the seat next to her and scans her eyes over the music. Her lips move as she goes over Quinn's notes, her head nodding approvingly. Quinn fights the urge to yawn and instead props an elbow on the top of the piano, leaning her forehead against her fist and letting her eyes fall halfway shut as Rachel inspects the music. It's quiet and peaceful, and for the first time since the school day started, she starts to relax.

"You could—" Rachel hesitates, pausing with one hand outstretched towards the sheet music, a pencil hanging limply between her fingers, and she looks uncertainly over at Quinn. "May I?"

"Go for it," Quinn says sleepily. "We both know you're better at this than I am."

"Not necessarily," Rachel says, even as she scratches in new chords for the bridge. Her eyes stay focused on the paper, lower lip catching contemplatively between her teeth. "I've been studying musical theory since I could read, but you have an intuition that not many people understand. There's a reason you always seem to find the most unexpectedly appropriate songs when you put your mind to it."

"Uh huh," Quinn says dully. "I'm sure." She pushes back to sit up straight and stretches, reveling for a moment as her shoulders pop satisfyingly.

"It's true," Rachel says, her tone distracted as she adds a few more notes. "There. Do you want to give that a try?"

"You do it," Quinn mumbles. "I need to stand up for a minute." She slides off of the bench, stretching again.

Rachel nods and scoots over to the center of the bench, her shoulders straightening into the perfect posture, and she picks up the music at the second chorus and rolls into the bridge, humming quietly along with it. Quinn watches, fingers toying absently with one another, and tries to imagine her voice melding so smoothly with the piano as Rachel's.

The song finishes, and Rachel shifts on the bench to look back at her. "How was that?"

"I like it," Quinn says. "It sounds better." Her phone vibrates from its position atop the piano, and she rolls her eyes when Rachel hands it to her.

The text message from her mother informs her that work is running late and she won't be able to come pick Quinn up. Quinn hasn't let herself miss her father and his tunnel vision since the day he kicked her out, but sometimes—when she doesn't have a car anymore, when she's trying to find scholarships and wrestle with financial aid applications because she's pretty sure Shelby is going to want to move Beth back to New York once Rachel no longer ties them all to Lima, when she wants to lavish Beth with all the gifts in the world— she really misses his financial support.

"Could I get a ride home?" she asks quietly.

"Of course," Rachel says. Her eyebrows furrow, her mouth opening like she wants to speak, but she stays silent and clenches her jaw visibly, standing from the piano and organizing Quinn's sheet music into a neat pile.

Silently, Quinn follows her out to the parking lot and takes a seat in the passenger seat of her car. As they're pulling out of the school, she rubs a hand tiredly over her eyes. "We sold my car over the summer," she says. "The alimony from my dad isn't enough to keep the house and the insurance on both cars, so we had to get rid of mine. Normally I get a ride with Santana or my mom picks me up, but she has to stay and do stuff for work, and Santana's…busy."

"With Brittany?" Rachel ventures, not taking her eyes off the road. Quinn snorts halfheartedly.

"As if there's anyone left who doesn't know, yes," she says with a half-smile. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Rachel smile at the road.

Neither of them speaks for the rest of the ride, until Quinn thanks Rachel and steps out onto her driveway. As she makes her way into the house, Quinn thinks that it might have been the first time in her life that silence felt comfortable instead of judgmental.

* * *

><p>She spends another two weeks perfecting the arrangement between classes and helping out Brittany and Santana. In the hallways, Rachel's quiet smiles and subtle waves are everything she can handle and, sometimes, all that she needs to make her day suck a little less; after school and after glee, Rachel helps her practice the song for however long she asks, and then drives her home.<p>

They haven't spoken of anything except the technicalities of the song since the first practice in the auditorium. Quinn isn't sure if it's because Rachel is afraid to push, or waiting for Quinn to have a breakdown; either way, it's quiet and comfortable and everything she needs to deal with her mother's absence and the easy way the Puck can sit on the floor and play with Beth.

When the AV club's recording equipment is secured for an evening and the song is ready to record and Artie's direction impossible to misunderstand, Rachel quietly hands Quinn the final iteration of the sheet music—they both have it memorized by now, but the slight weight of the papers in her hand is comforting—and says that she'll leave her alone.

Quinn's fingers latch onto Rachel's wrist before she can make it out the door, but she can't seem to find any words to say. Rachel waits, her gaze appraising, until Quinn finally says, "You can stay. If you want."

"It's not about what I want," Rachel says slowly, and Quinn clenches her jaw because after all of this, she thought that Rachel would _get it_, what she was saying, what she was asking.

"Never mind," Quinn mutters. She lets go of Rachel's wrist and spins back to face the recording equipment.

Rachel appears at her side, hands coming to her shoulders and steering her towards the piano. "I'd love to stay, if you don't mind," she says, flipping through settings on the recording equipment expertly.

And Quinn, sudden and abrupt—because it feels right; because it feels real; because for the first time ever she doesn't feel like Lucy Caboosey, or the head Cheerio, or the pregnant girl or the pink-haired screw-up; because it feels like it has to be that point that comes in all reinventions where things start to fall into place and she's starting to the kind of person she wants to be for her daughter and her mother and her friends and for _Rachel_—steps forward, her movements jerky and uncertain, and wordlessly, awkwardly hugs Rachel. The sheet music crumples up between them, and Rachel inhales sharply for a brief second before recovering from her shock and shifting, her movements felt easy and comfortable and enviably confident within Quinn's arms, to return the hug.

It passes quickly, and Quinn steps back, dabbing at her eyes while simultaneously pretending that she's not crying in front of Rachel _again_. Rachel offers her the now-wrinkled sheet music, a small smile teasing at her lips until Quinn takes them.

"I think you're set," she says, running her fingers over the soundboard one more time. "Just press record and go for it."

"Thanks," Quinn mutters. She slides onto the bench in front of the keyboard, eying it apprehensively. Her hands tremble almost visibly, her chest tightening, and automatically, she grabs for her backpack and the inhaler waiting inside it.

By the time her lungs stop constricting, Rachel is suddenly beside her, a frown creasing her features. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Quinn says, her voice hoarse and wavering. She inhales deeply, steeling herself against the tremors still fighting their way into her fingers, and straightens the music neatly in front of her.

"I—are you sure?" Rachel asks again. "You don't have to do this today. We can come back tomorrow, or next week, if you want."

"No," Quinn says quickly. "I need to do this."

"Okay." Rachel nods agreeably, her voice bright but her eyes concerned. "Do you want me to wait outside?"

"It's fine," Quinn mumbles. "You can…stay." She'll never do this if she has to face it alone, and somehow, everything has fallen into place so that Rachel is the only person she can imagine witnessing this.

"Okay," Rachel says again. She moves to perch on the stool by the soundboard, glancing over at Quinn, who simply rolls her head on her neck, runs a few scales on the piano, and then nods curtly over at Rachel.

The red recording light flashes on, and slowly, Quinn starts to speak. By the time she's said enough of her own words and is playing the first chords of their arrangement, there are tears trying to edge their way out of her eyes and Rachel is looking at her with heartbreak written across her face. Quinn closes her eyes to hide from the honesty of it all and, right on cue, begins to sing.

_I don't want this moment to ever end_

_Where everything's nothing without you_

_I'd wait here forever just to, to see you smile_

'_Cos it's true: I am nothing without you_


	5. Chapter 5

Half an hour later, when the recording light is off and the mp3 saved and sent to Quinn's email and backed up on a flash drive and a CD, Quinn is silent as Rachel offers her a ride home. She follows Rachel out to the parking lot, her back curving tiredly under the weight of her bag and the recordings tucked safely within, right next to her inhaler.

In the driveway to Quinn's house, Rachel stares unblinkingly across the car at where Quinn sits, motionless and slumped back in her seat and staring at the dashboard.

"Quinn," Rachel finally says. "Can I ask you something?"

Quinn is silent, but she shrugs halfheartedly. She doesn't know if she wants to leave the car more than she wants Rachel to drive them away from Lima so she can be a new person, a better person, someone who has a chance to start from a better place than Lima, Ohio.

"I just…listening to you talk to Beth, I couldn't help but…" her words trail off for a moment, and Quinn tilts her head back against the seat. She wonders what would happen if she just curled up and fell asleep then and there, in Rachel's car. If Rachel would wake her up, or let her sleep for a while. If she would sleep peacefully for once.

"I'm worried about you," Rachel says eventually. "The way you were talking, it's like you know you aren't going to be around when Beth gets older. And—well—I mean, I know you've been through so much, and you've lost a lot, and you've been hurt a lot, but—"

"What, you think I'm going to kill myself?" Quinn says. Her voice is dull and lifeless, her head lolling over to look at Rachel out of the corner of one eye. Rachel's eyes are wide and apprehensive, just like always, and the sight would make Quinn smile if she had the energy. Once upon a time, she loved it when Rachel was afraid of her; now, it's nothing but comical, because Rachel is Beth in so many ways, and Quinn would never do anything to hurt Beth.

"I'm just worried about you," Rachel says quietly.

"I'm not going to kill myself," Quinn mutters. "I'm not that screwed up."

"You're unhappy, though," Rachel says.

"Yeah," Quinn says after a long moment. "I guess I am."

"Are you—are you talking to anyone about it?"

The waver in her voice, the stutter that's never there unless it's just the two of them, the complete and utter lack of confidence keep Quinn from hearing the question until it feels like it's echoing between them. She freezes—not that she's moved much since sitting down, anyways, but the rigidity that bolts through her body is sudden and painful—and wishes for a single, wild moment that she could douse Rachel in a slushie for even thinking to bring up therapy.

"If you want, I know several counselors," Rachel goes on hesitantly. "I could recommend—"

"I'm not," Quinn snaps. "I'm not going to, either."

"Why not?" The stutter is gone, curiosity replacing fear, and it makes Quinn want to crush the confidence and snatch back the control Rachel constantly steals from mer.

"I don't need it," she says. Her voice is low and tight, the words clipped.

"I don't mean to be rude, but maybe you do."

"Then don't be," Quinn says. "I don't want to go to therapy."

"Why not? It can help so much, I know it's done wonders for me, and maybe—" The hesitation works its way back into Rachel's voice, just barely enough to make Quinn feel less like she's spinning out of control. "Maybe you could find a way to be happy."

"That's bullshit," Quinn says dourly. "And it doesn't matter. Beth matters, not me, and talking about my childhood to a stranger isn't going to do anything to make her life better."

"You deserve to be happy, too," Rachel says. She hasn't looked away from Quinn's profile yet.

"It's not about deserving," Quinn says, her voice soft and almost inaudible in the near-dark of early evening. "It's about reality. And the reality of it is that my daughter matters more than my _happiness_, and me being a big part of her life probably isn't going to do her any good."

"Why?" Rachel sounds so confused, so confounded, so unlike herself, and it draws a dark chuckle out of Quinn.

"Because," she drawls. "I'll never be strong enough to spend time with her regularly without resenting Shelby, even if I can barely feel it sometimes. Because Shelby is older and wiser and braver and kinder than I'll ever be, and Beth needs that more than I need to have her in my life."

Rachel is silent, and in the periphery of Quinn's vision, she finally looks away, her eyes casting down to her lap. "My parents have given me a wonderful life," she says quietly. "They had the financial means to provide me with everything I never needed, and they love me so much, as much as I love them. And I know now that Shelby loves me as her daughter, too, even if she completely screwed up our chance. I have a fantastic family, and I know it.

"But that doesn't mean that I don't want Shelby to be a part of my life, or that I haven't wanted that for as long as I can remember. Every birthday, every Hanukkah, I wished for her to come back, even though I knew it was impossible. The fact that my parents are wonderful doesn't mean I want or need my _mother_ any less."

She pauses, looking back over at Quinn, who is staring helplessly down at the backpack resting between her feet, trying to will her body to move so she can leave the car and the impending claustrophobia, but her legs refuse to move, her ears too focused on Rachel's words for her brain to make anything else happen.

"I know you're thinking about keeping yourself out of Beth's life to protect her," Rachel says. Her voice is stronger than it has been since before they finally recorded Quinn's song. "And I know it's because you love her and want her to have the best life possible. And I'm not saying that her life will be bad if you leave Lima after graduation and all she has of you is this recording. You said yourself that Shelby is devoted to her, and by now Noah is, too. She'll have a good life, even if you leave."

Tears are starting to burn in Quinn's eyes, matching the burning feeling growing in her chest. Her fingers clench at each other atop her legs, her jaw locking furiously. Half of her hates everything Rachel is saying; the other half swears that it's what she's been wanting to hear all along.

"But if you're not there," Rachel continues. "Even if she's got a great life and a great family, she's always going to miss you. She's going to be smart, you know she is, with her genetics. And she looks so much like you and not at all like Shelby, she'll probably figure out on her own before the first grade that she's adopted. And if you're not there, she will always, _always_ wonder who you are, where you are, what you're doing, why you aren't there. It won't matter if Shelby and Noah and everyone else in her life explain that you wanted to protect her by keeping your distance because of some misguided self-loathing. Her mother won't be there, and she'll miss you."

"I'm not her mother," Quinn croaks out. Her whole body aches at how much easier that truth is than the lies she threw at Shelby so many weeks ago. Nausea rolls in her stomach, the car feeling like it's spinning in place and the doors creeping in on them. "I can't be, I don't know how to be. I don't have anything to offer her. She deserves everything, and I can't give her anything."

"You are, and you have, and you do," Rachel says gently. "You carried her for nine months, Quinn. You gave birth to her. You gave her up once, and you're willing to do it again. She's going to be smart like you, and she'll either be an athlete like Noah or a dancer like you. She has musical talent coming from both sides, genetically. She has three parents who adore her. You've already given her so much, and she's not even two years old yet."

Quinn can't find a response within the half-formed thoughts racing around her mind. Her breath is coming in short, shallow gasps, and her lungs feel like they're trying to contract in on themselves. She fumbles for the zippers on her backpack, hands shaking, as she tries to open the bag and find the cursed inhaler that she's grown to be so dependent on.

Cool hands wrap around her wrists, tugging them away from the backpack. One stays resting over both of hers in her lap, and the other fishes the inhaler out and tucks it into her still-shaking fingers.

"Breathe slowly," Rachel advises. "Count the beats. Eight in, eight out, like in vocal warm ups."

Sixteen beats pass slowly, and the clenching in her chest begins to release. Her hands stop trembling, her heartbeat slowing down to a more manageable pace, and the doors stop pressing on her.

"Better?" Rachel asks eventually.

"Yeah," Quinn mumbles. The exhaustion that's been weighting her shoulders for so long washes over her, and she can't help but yawn. She's tired, so tired, and she's especially tired of having claustrophobia-triggered panic attacks because of Rachel Berry. The energy to keep talking, to get out of the car and walk up the sidewalk, to make it up the stairs to her bed, seems elusive and just out of reach; she slumps tiredly to her right, her temple pressing against the cold glass of the window. Maybe Rachel will just drive home and leave Quinn asleep in the passenger seat; a part of her laughs, silent and sardonic, at how such a ridiculous notion seems like a more appealing idea than going into her own home.

Rachel shifts back in her seat, eying the dark house in front of them. "Is your mom even home?"

"No," Quinn says sleepily. "She goes and stays with her friends at their cottage outside of town every weekend. Makes her feel like she didn't throw all of our money out with my dad."

"Oh, "Rachel says. "Do you—I could—if you want, I could stay awhile."

Quinn's head rolls over to the left, half-lidded eyes taking in the carefully calm expression on Rachel's face. "I doubt we have anything vegan besides salad," she says after a long silence.

"That's fine," Rachel said. "I like salads. And whatever you have is probably still better than the salad bar at Breadstix."

"Right," Quinn says, rolling her eyes, but there's no venom in her voice, nor any emotion behind the eyeroll. She pulls herself out of the car, backpack heavy in her hands. Inside, she drops her bag at the base of the stairs and gestures through a yawn in the direction of the kitchen. Rachel makes her way in the direction Quinn had pointed out, and Quinn, for the first time since her mother told her they were going to have to cut back financially and Santana silently surveyed the half-empty house with tight shoulders and a clenched jaw—Quinn had never found it in her to really appreciate the fact that Santana had sometimes been as protective of her as Brittany—isn't ashamed of the empty walls that had once held elegant artwork, or the empty room that had once been her father's study, or the random indentations in the carpet where the furniture they'd sold once stood.

She doesn't protest when Rachel insists on putting together a salad for them to eat, manners taking a backseat to fatigue, and she simply sits at the kitchen island and watches. They eat in silence, and wind up in the living room watching bad reality television reruns.

Rachel is quiet, as she always has been this year around Quinn, and Quinn, without meaning to, finally relaxes. Her shoulders slump and her spine bows, her chin curving down towards her chest; she's half asleep while still sitting up and only vaguely aware of Rachel coaxing her to lay down on the couch and spreading a blanket over her.

She wakes in the middle of the night to see Rachel curled up into a ball in the easy chair next to the couch, legs folded and contorted in a way that would probably make even Brittany and Mike wince. Sleepily, too tired to understand—or even wonder—why, Quinn shuffles over to the laundry room and retrieves another blanket, which she tucks around Rachel carefully before falling back onto the couch and back into sleep.

She sleeps through the rest of the night soundly, for the first time in over a year.

* * *

><p>The recording sits on her computer, on a CD in her car, on her iPod, and in her email for weeks. October drifts past, and Quinn allows Brittany and Santana to coerce her into the Charlie's Angels Halloween costumes they'd planned out in the ninth grade for their senior year out-with-a-bang party schedule, and somehow ends up playing designated driver at the requisite kegger not just for them, but also Mike, Tina, Finn, Mack—who looks gleefully interested in Finn's bumbling awkwardness—Mercedes, Kurt, and, somehow, a supposedly reformed Karofsky who'd spent most of the party drunk and apologizing to Kurt.<p>

Rachel is conspicuously absent from Finn's side, and even when he's drunk and Mack is creeping a hand up his leg, he looks upset and stops her progress, half-shouting that he has a girlfriend. From the front seat, Quinn rolls her eyes and shoots a glare at Mack through the rear view mirror.

"Leave him alone, Mack," she says, unable to keep a tinge of amusement out of her tired voice. It's her fourth trip from the party to take people home, and it's one in the morning and she's sick of Mike and Tina rounding second in the back seat, Brittany and Santana hitting third, Mercedes sulking while Kurt attends to an almost-tearful Karofsky, and now Mack trying to mount Finn. "He's taken."

"Fine," Mack huffs, slumping back into her seat. Finn looks relieved even with a drunk glaze in his eyes, and he mumbles something that sounds like _thank you_ under his breath.

"Whatever," Quinn mumbles. She pulls to a stop outside of Mack's current crash pad and smirks cheekily at the other girl—the skanks had been a pain in the ass most of the time, but Mack was never quite as irritating as the rest, and Quinn sometimes missed hanging out with her—before taking off towards Finn's house.

He's half-asleep when she makes it there, and thankfully Kurt is waiting on the front porch with Mercedes to help him in. Quinn waves to them and waits until they're inside before pulling away, ready to finally go home.

She's halfway there when she drives past Rachel's house and sees an upstairs light on, and unintentionally rolls to a stop across the street. She knew Rachel's parents were out of town for the weekend—why, she didn't know, nor particularly care—and wondered, not for the first time of the night, why Rachel hadn't been out with all of their friends.

Without really thinking about it, she digs her phone out of the console and dials Rachel's number.

"Hello?"

"Hey," Quinn says hesitantly. "What's up?"

"I—nothing," Rachel says after a moment. There's a quiet shuffling in the background. "You wouldn't happen to be outside my house right now, would you? Because if you aren't, there's a creeper that may be Jacob Ben Israel idling across the street."

"It's me," Quinn says. "I was on my way home and I saw your light on and—why weren't you at the party tonight?"

Rachel sighs. "Finn and I had an argument," she says after a few moments. "Also, I didn't have a costume planned out."

"Right," Quinn says, because instinct still prods her to leap at Rachel's weaknesses and press for any advantage she has. They might actually be friends now—she doesn't know how else to describe the odd, stoic silence that seems to work between them—but eighteen years of habit die hard, and sometimes Rachel makes it so easy to hurt her.

Quinn pauses, deliberating in her mind, before speaking again. "Santana left a bottle of Stoli in my backseat. We could get drunk and watch reruns of Jersey Shore."

Rachel laughs quietly. "Are you sure? I've got to believe that there are things you'd rather be doing."

"It's 1:30 in the morning on a Saturday," Quinn says. "And whatever, if you don't want to, that's fine."

"No!" Rachel says. "No, that's not what I meant. I just… I mean, I know that this year has been different and I think perhaps we're friends for real this time, but you have to understand that it still confuses me sometimes when you want to be around me."

"Welcome to my life since the tenth grade," Quinn mutters. "I offered because I want to, okay? Take it or leave it."

"Taking it," Rachel says firmly. "I'll be right down."

"Terrific," Quinn deadpans before hanging up. She pulls the car into Rachel's driveway and tightens her coat around herself—the costumes had been a hit, but nothing about Charlie's Angels had ever even pretended to be mindful of cold Ohio weather—and grabs the liquor out of the car on her way out. Rachel is waiting in the doorway, swallowed up in a sweatshirt that must be one of her fathers' because it's about four sizes too big, and she laughs at how Quinn is shivering from the short walk from the car.

They demolish the bottle in two hours and fall asleep slumped on the couch, _RENT_ playing through to the end of its credits on the television in front of them, and Quinn wakes up with a hangover that feels like a nuclear holocaust in her head and a roller coaster in her stomach. Rachel isn't much better offer, and they spend the day taking turns throwing up in the bathroom, watching Halloween movie marathons on TV, and throwing pieces of popcorn that they can't stomach at the TV while they mock the terrible acting.

When they're both too tired to think about everything that's always stood between them—Finn and Puck and Beth and social hierarchy and family expectation and just _everything_ about their lives—Quinn finds that banter is easy and comfortable, and it feels kind of like summer nights between ninth and tenth grade, staying up until sunrise during sleepovers with Brittany and Santana until they were all too sleepy to talk coherently but too stubborn to be the first one asleep. It's quiet and simple and just fuzzy enough around the edges to not feel real.

By the time Quinn makes her way home just before dinnertime, clad in borrow sweatpants and a t-shirt and her hangover fading away, she realizes that she hasn't felt the familiar stab of self-loathing since about midnight the night before. And the next day, when she gets a text from Rachel as she's perfecting her make-up for church—_I still can't decide if Friday was a great idea or a horrible one._—she just laughs and shakes her head, wincing at the last remnants of her own hangover.

_Don't lie, Berry, you loved it._

* * *

><p><em>Beth, please don't think too badly of me for wanting to take you back from Shelby. I just…I missed you, so much, and I was missing out on your life, and I wanted the chance to be everything to you that I never had as a kid. But…but then I saw you with Shelby, and how happy and safe and healthy you were, and I couldn't do anything to jeopardize that. She'll always be your mom, even if I love you just as much as she does. <em>


	6. Chapter 6

By the time winter break rolls around, a dozen college applications and nearly fifty scholarship essays are sent off, and the recordings still sit at her house, untouched and unheard. Quinn splits her time between her mother and Beth on Christmas day, just as she had on Thanksgiving, and lets Shelby snap as many pictures as she wants of the four of them surrounded by Christmas decorations and Puck's menorah.

Rachel sends her a text on Christmas morning (_Merry Christmas, Quinn! I hope you've had a good holiday this year_) and she responds without thinking about it, for once (_Beth threw up on Puck's yarmulke. His face was the most hilarious Christmas gift ever I've ever gotten)_. The fact that the only other people to contact her are Santana and Brittany (who she can't help but count as a single entity at this point, since they somehow seem to spend all of their time hooking up in places that Quinn is convinced are picked solely so she'll walk in on them and blush furiously) and Puck and Sam hurts less than she thought it would.

When she finds herself once again ferrying her friends home after a New Year's party, after she slams to a stop outside of Brittany's house and yells at her friends to stop having sex in the back seat, she calls Rachel because the other girl hadn't come to the party due to a cold. They split another bottle of liquor—rum, this time, mixed carelessly with diet Coke—and Quinn passes out curled up on the couch to the sound of Rachel singing drunkenly.

The next afternoon, when she can't move without feeling like she's going to throw up, Quinn stares at the ceiling of Rachel's living room and considers New Year's resolutions, her fingers unconsciously tapping against the couch to the rhythm of Rachel's quiet snores. She doesn't move from the couch until Rachel finally wakes up to groan about her own hangover, and even then, she just smirks contentedly and keeps her gaze trained at the ceiling.

* * *

><p>Two months into the spring semester, college application responses start fluttering in. Finn somehow makes it into Ohio State—Quinn is convinced that Rachel wrote his essays, but she finds herself with nothing but a good-natured eyeroll and a quiet nod of congratulations sent his way. Mike makes it into Harvard and Stanford and looks as excited about it as he would if his parents had just told him he was going to be shipped to Antarctica for college instead. Artie gets into some tech school no one has ever heard of, but he's ecstatic, so they all offer congratulations.<p>

Santana gets into Brown and Columbia, to the surprise of everyone but Brittany and Quinn, and smirks arrogantly when people gape at her announcement and then proceeds to hit second base with Brittany in about four seconds before Mr. Scheu finds the presence of mind to clear his throat. Brittany, to the surprise of no one, got into approximately nineteen different conservatories, and has no idea which one she wants to go to. Rachel, of course, gets into NYU and four other schools in the New York area, and she squeals with delight when Kurt announces his acceptance into some fashionista school in the city as well. Within an hour, they're looking at apartment rates on Craigslist.

And Quinn, forever in the background but less hurt by it now than she used to be, tells herself that it doesn't bother her that only half of the glee club thought to ask about where she'd gotten into. Her mother had simply fretted tiredly at the cost of an Ivy League education; Santana had rolled her eyes and said that _of course_ Quinn would go to Brown or Columbia and they would rule the school together, while Brittany sat wrapped around her from behind and smiled serenely at Quinn; Puck just nodded dumbly and went back to playing with Beth. Rachel, in that strangely quiet manner that she only converted to around Quinn, simply offered her congratulations and an awkward hug and her world renowned planning capabilities.

The only person whose opinion matters, though, is Shelby's, and that's how Quinn finds herself sitting in a coffee shop, staring anxiously across a booth to where Shelby and Beth sit. Six acceptance letters lay spread out across the table in front of Shelby, each meticulously stapled to the generous scholarship offers that came with them.

"These are fantastic schools, Quinn," Shelby says softly. Quinn doesn't know if she should be offended at the surprise etched across the older woman's face, but she can't help the tiniest rise of indignation. "What are you going to do?"

"I…don't know," Quinn says. "I wanted to talk to you about it. To see what your plans are."

"Quinn, this is your future, your education," Shelby says. She's absently rocking Beth's carseat beside her, eyes locked onto Quinn's. "And you have six options here that anyone would kill for."

"I also have a daughter who'll be two when I'm a freshman," Quinn says blandly. "And she goes where you go, so I need to know where you two are going to be."

"I—Quinn, you need to make this choice on your own," Shelby says. Her brow is furrowing, so horribly similar to Rachel's, and Quinn knows that it means that Shelby is about to pull the adult card on her.

"I'm pretty sure that if I want to be a part of her life, I need to stop making choices on my own," Quinn throws back. "You know that I get it, right? _You _are her mother. I'll never be the right person to be her mom, but I still want to be a part of her life, okay? I don't want college to get in the way of that, so I need to know if you're planning on staying in Lima."

"And if I am? What, are you just going to blow off all of these schools? None of these are even remotely close to Ohio—you're looking at California and the northeast, Quinn. No matter which one you choose, you won't be able to just pop in the car and drive down for the weekend."

"I know," Quinn says quietly. She extracts a third set of papers from her bag and hands them to Shelby: her six Plan B school acceptances; though, somewhere along the way, B stopped standing for _backup_ and started standing for _Beth_.

She watches, forcing herself to sip patiently on her coffee, as Shelby's eyebrows climb higher and higher.

"You can't be serious," she finally says, tossing the letters down disdainfully. "Ohio State? Case Western? Quinn, you got into _Princeton_. And Stanford, and Columbia and Brown and Georgetown and Berkeley. You can't seriously be thinking that Ohio State is even an option."

"It is if Beth is in Ohio," Quinn says, her voice mild, if tense.

"This is insane," Shelby says. She shakes her head, slumping back against the booth. "People would kill for the chance you have, Quinn. You're too smart to go to any school Ohio has to offer."

"There's another option."

Rachel's voice sounds from behind Quinn, making both Quinn and Shelby jump.

"Jesus, Rachel," Quinn snaps. Lukewarm coffee decorates the tabletop from where she spilled it. "What are you _doing_ here?"

"I followed you," Rachel says unashamedly. "Scoot over." She elbows Quinn comfortably until the other girl moves to her right with a glare. Shelby stares across the table at them, perplexed and uncertain.

"Hi," she says softly, her eyes locked on Rachel. Quinn shifts, suddenly even more uncomfortable than she already had been arguing with Shelby, because for all of the time she's spent with Rachel this year, and all of the time with Shelby, she's never been stuck between the two of them, and the tension almost _hurts_ and is everything she doesn't want for Beth fifteen years from now.

"Hello," Rachel says firmly. "Now, the problem here is that Quinn got into several top-tier colleges but doesn't want to consider one that distances her from Beth, right?" She pauses for the barest of moments, just enough for Shelby to nod jerkily, before continuing.

"There _is_ an option that would work for all parties involved, I think," she says. "I'm going to NYU. Quinn got into Columbia. Quinn would like to remain a part of Beth's life. And I, as _your_ daughter, Shelby, would like for you to actually be a part of my life."

Quinn can't avoid the visible guilt flashing through Shelby's eyes as she winces at Rachel's calm words.

"You owe me," Rachel says, her voice quiet. "You came back into my life, and you dangled the one dream I'd all but given up on in front of me, and then you ruined it all. Now you have a baby, just like you always wanted, and you have an opportunity to fix what you broke with us. I'll be in New York, and so can all three of you. I know you love the city, I know you can have a fruitful career there—far more so than here. There's nothing to stop all of us from moving up there and getting away from this horrible little town and starting over."

"But what about Puck?" Quinn mumbles apprehensively. She refuses to let herself hope at Rachel's words, because if there's one thing Shelby's proved perfectly consistent at, besides caring for Beth, it's hurting Rachel even more than Quinn ever has.

"I already spoke to Noah," Rachel says. Her eyes haven't left Shelby's face, and Quinn is endlessly grateful that she's not the one on the receiving end of that glare. "He's willing to make a move to New York work. He's worked construction in the past, and we all know that what he may lack in academic capabilities, he more than makes up for in street smarts.

"I also spoke to Kurt," she adds softly, finally turning to face Quinn. "He's willing to consider the four of us splitting a large apartment or something, assuming we can find a location relatively central to all of our schools. Or six, if Santana decides on Columbia and can find a way to reign in her homicidal tendencies and incessant need to have sex with Brittany on every solid surface of the apartment."

The part of Quinn that normally would have been angry at how Rachel had been going around behind her back, talking about her with all of their friends, is too focused on the sleeping baby across the table from her to care. She stares at Beth, hands itching to hold her, and locks her jaw as she waits for Shelby to speak.

Long, arduous seconds pass in silence, in which Rachel stares at Shelby, Shelby stares at Quinn, and Quinn stares at Beth and unconsciously clenches at Rachel's knee underneath the table. Finally, though, Shelby takes a deep breath and picks up the stack of Plan B acceptances. With a slow exhalation, she folds them in half once and sets them to the side.

"Columbia, then?" she says. Her voice finally draws Quinn's eyes away from Beth, and Quinn's entire body slackens with relief at the words, leaving her slumping half against the seat back and half against Rachel.

"Columbia," Quinn says, her voice light with laughter and sounding nothing like it ever had before. For the first time, she doesn't flinch and it doesn't feel awkward when Rachel swiftly shifts in the bench and hugs her tightly.

* * *

><p>Inevitably, Rachel and Finn break up. It happens loudly and publicly, in front of the entire glee club on afternoon in the middle of a dance rehearsal for Regionals, and starts with Finn in a bad mood about Artie taking the male lead on the ballad and ends with Rachel practically shrieking something mostly incomprehensible that sounds like "Forget the summer, we're done <em>now<em>!" before storming out.

They all stand in stunned silence, staring at Finn or the door Rachel had just left through, until Santana snorts behind her hand and comments on the dumbfounded look on Finn's face. The whole group dissolves into uncertain murmurs as Mr. Scheu reprimands Santana—too harshly, really, but even Finn knew by then that he was Mr. Scheu's favorite—and Quinn, silent, debates for a full thirty seconds before grabbing her bag and Rachel's and jogging out of the room.

The other girl is sitting in the choir room, back stiff from her perch on the piano bench and eyes glued to the hands in her lap. Quinn lets the heels of her shoes scuff against the floor, loud enough so she won't surprise Rachel, before settling down in a chair behind Rachel.

"I brought your stuff," she says eventually. "In case you wanted to go home early."

"Thanks," Rachel mumbles, her voice barely audible, but she doesn't follow it up with anything else. Quinn shifts uncomfortably, even now unsure of how to deal with a quiet Rachel Berry—though, to be fair, it feels entirely different to be the one who isn't hurting for once. She crosses her legs and her arms, and elects to stay silent. It's worked for them so far.

She doesn't have Rachel's patience, though, which is both ironic and laughable, and she eventually breaks the silence. "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," Rachel says. "Is that dumb? We knew we were going to break up. It shouldn't bother me."

"Just because you know it's going to happen doesn't make it hurt any less," Quinn says drily. "I knew my dad was going to throw me out, but that didn't make it suck any less."

"That's a horribly morbid comparison that's doing nothing to make me feel better," Rachel says. She turns to face Quinn, though, and the tiniest hint of a smile is pulling at the corners of her mouth.

Quinn shrugs. She doesn't know where their conversations are supposed to go anymore, not without Rachel leading the way.

"If you want, I bet Santana would be okay with egging his car or something," she offers. "Or you could give St. James a call and see if he'd be okay with playing a ninja and slashing Finn's tires in retaliation or something."

Rachel laughs quietly, shaking her head. "I don't want to hurt him," she says, but she's smiling, and the words don't sound certain.

Quinn shrugs again, and smirks. "It's not about hurting him, it's about feeling better."

Rachel chuckles and shakes her head again. "How did we end up like this?" she asks. "With you sitting her taking care of me after I broke up with Finn. How did this happen?"

Quinn shifts uncomfortably, her eyes darting around the room. "Does it matter?"

"I don't know," Rachel says. "But I do think it means something."

"Not everything means something."

"But maybe this does," Rachel counters. She sighs, pushing up to her feet and starting to pace, arms curled around her stomach. Out of the corner of one eye, Quinn traces her movements left and right, left and right.

"Last year," Rachel says. She stops abruptly, halfway between Quinn and the door. "When I asked you about the nose job. Why did you go along with it?"

Quinn inhales sharply, her eyes darting over to glare at Rachel momentarily before avoiding her once more. She grips the sides of her chair tightly, not caring that her knuckles are white and the plastic is creaking inside of them.

"Why?" Rachel asks, almost desperately. "You hated me for so long. Why would you do what I asked?"

"Don't go there," Quinn mutters darkly. "Leave it alone."

"No!" Rachel says. "I don't care what you say, but we're friends now—really friends, this time—and you owe me that much. I just want to know."

"Why does that matter?" Quinn snaps. "Why that and not the nicknames, the mocking? Why not the drawings? Why does _that_ matter?"

"It just does," Rachel says stubbornly. "Just tell me, will you? You never do anything without a reason, even if it's convoluted, we both know that. You had to have had a reason for it, and I just want to _know_—"

"Because I hated you," Quinn spits out. It shuts Rachel up abruptly, brown eyes widening in hurt and making Quinn stomach twist uncomfortably. "I hated you for years because you got to be whoever you wanted and I didn't. I hated you because you didn't have your parents and sister needling at you for years until you asked for a nose job. And I hated myself for letting them get to me, because even if I was miserable and alone I still had some dignity, and I let go of it. You had everything and I hated you for it, so if you made the same mistakes I did then, well, maybe you wouldn't be that much better than me anymore, would you?

Rachel is staring at her, somewhere between shock and flattery, and Quinn's breath is coming heavily and she wants to _run_. She pushes to her feet, starting to loop around Rachel towards the door, and is halfway there when Rachel's hand snaps out and wraps tightly around her wrist.

"Thank you," Rachel says. Her words are more jolting than the hand gripping Quinn's arm. "For being honest with me. And for last year, for not forcing an opinion on me about it. You could have pressured me until I would have gone through with it, but you didn't. Everyone else had an opinion about it, but you just went with it. Thank you."

"Whatever," Quinn mutters. She pulls her wrist free, staring down at the fading marks from Rachel's fingers.

"I'm sorry," Rachel adds. "For pushing you just then. I know—I know you don't like talking about the last few years, or any of your past for that matter."

"Whatever," Quinn repeats. "It's fine." Except it isn't fine, it isn't even close to fine, because Rachel is still pushing her way into Quinn's life and Quinn can't—won't?—find a way to make her stop, because her hands are shaking and her chest aches like she might have her first panic attack in three months, because Rachel is still looking at her like she's done something wondrous and a part of her still itches to slap the optimism right out of the other girl.

Instead, because she doesn't know what else to do to stave off the walls that are starting to press in, she makes her way back to the center of the room and slumps at the piano, closing her eyes and pretending the room doesn't feel too small and airless. Rachel sits next to her, cautiously pressed against her side, and Quinn is too tired to stiffen and shift away.

Finally, once her heartbeat is back under control and the warmth of Rachel at her side no longer feels oppressive, she sits up straighter and takes a slow, measured breath. "We can still egg his car," she says quietly. It's a peace offering, an apology, an explanation, and her body slackens with relief when Rachel takes it for everything it is and nothing at all, simply laughing and shaking her head.

"I think I'll survive," she says with a smile. "I may have to find solace in some vegan ice cream and a musical DVD or two, but I think I'll be okay."

Quinn rolls her eyes, scoffing. "Vegan ice cream is disgusting. And I got another bottle of Stoli from Santana last weekend."

"Firstly, there is no way Santana just gave you a bottle of liquor," Rachel starts primly. "Secondly, I told you that I'm never drinking with you again because I inevitably hate myself the next day. And thirdly, Regionals are just around the corner and hard liquor is terrible for your voice. Also—"

Without thinking about it, without pausing to weigh the consequences or consider the outcomes, Quinn latches a hand over Rachel's mouth and raises a finger to her own lips. "Shh," she scolds. She hasn't acted spontaneously since Puck and his wine coolers showed up on her fat day two years ago, and touching Rachel—it's always been Rachel touching Quinn and Quinn trying to fight past the instinct to flee at the contact—seems somehow infinitely safer and spectacularly more terrifying.

"What Santana doesn't know won't hurt her, you've been saying no more drinking for the last six months and still do it anyways, and that thing about Regionals is just a sad excuse." She finally lowers her hand, forcing a smirk and nonchalance at Rachel's perplexed eyes. "But if you don't want to, fine, that's cool."

She turns to face the piano, running a scale on the keys, and waits for Rachel to speak.

"Can we go to your house this time? If I'm going to throw up everything I've eaten today, I'd prefer not risking my parents witnessing it."

Quinn snorts, playing another scale, then the first few bars of the arrangement they made for Beth. "Sure, whatever," she says. "I think my dad's dartboard is still in the study, if you want to tack Finn's picture up there."

Rachel laughs, short and loud, and claps a hand over her mouth to cover the sound. "I really shouldn't…okay, maybe," she tapers off. It draws another smirk out of Quinn, who cuts off the music abruptly and pushes to her feet.

Rachel moves to stand beside her, smoothing her skirt carefully. "Thank you," she says again. "For—I mean, I guess this is what it's like, having friends, right?"

Quinn shrugs, reaching for their jackets and handing Rachel's over. "Don't ask me, I wouldn't know." An edge of bitterness that she didn't even really feel seeps into the words.

"Me either," Rachel admits. "But I think it is." She slides her jacket on, buttoning it carefully, before suddenly stepping closer until she's almost pressed against Quinn's side. "I—would it be okay if I hugged you?"

Quinn's mouth dries up at the words, her jacket halfway on; she shrugs into it slowly, staring at Rachel's uncertainty with her own matching apprehension. Something's shifted, somehow, in some direction she doesn't know or understand, and suddenly the next five seconds feel more pivotal than the five when she agreed to sleep with Puck, when realization dawned on her father's face, when she stood in a hospital watching her daughter with Shelby Corcoran at her side.

And because Rachel's always moving first—because Rachel's the one who always has the courage, because Quinn is tired of being a coward like everyone else in her family, because waiting for other people is safer but more heartbreaking and exhausting—Quinn doesn't respond, but simply wraps her arms around Rachel's shoulders and hugs her stiffly.

The quiet gasp from Rachel is muffled against Quinn's shoulder, and an agonizing second passes before her arms move around Quinn as well and tighten. Quinn bites down on her lip and clings tighter to Rachel than she meant to, her chin falling tiredly down to Rachel's shoulder as her body relaxes in to the embrace.

They don't talk about it. But when they split the bottle of Stoli, mixing screwdrivers and shots on the floor of Quinn's bedroom while mocking the Kardashians and Paris Hilton, it's easier than it ever has been before. And when Quinn wakes up at four in the morning, still drunk enough for the world to feel soft around the edges, with Rachel wrapped around her like a pretzel, she just rolls onto her side and fades back into sleep, warm and content and with Rachel pressed tightly against her back.

* * *

><p>The remaining months disappear, and suddenly, graduation is there and then ending. They'd taken second at Nationals—though they slaughtered Vocal Adrenaline at Regionals, though, and that was what really mattered—and no one questioned the fact that it was almost definitely Shelby who made it happen. Quinn was salutatorian and Mike was valedictorian, and she had laughingly refused when he tried to get her to take his speech. His quiet confidence was a grounding contrast to Brittany's effervescent senior class president speech, and after that it didn't take long for the entire class to walk for their diplomas.<p>

Afterwards, there are hugs and tears and pictures, and Quinn lets Rachel and Shelby and her mother and Brittany all yank her from one pose to another. She laughs when everyone else is surprised by Sam showing up—he'd told her months earlier, when he called about how he'd been accepted to Pratt's architecture program, to tell her he wanted to surprise everyone at graduation—and watches with amusement as Finn and Puck and Mike all happily tackle him, graduation robes flying behind them.

Her eyes are locked on their impromptu wrestling match—accompanied by a chorus of laughter and indignant shrieks from parents—and doesn't look away until she feels someone pressing into her back. Rachel is silent, her focus on the boys as well, but she hugs Quinn from behind, chin resting on the taller girl's shoulder.

"You're going to Columbia," she says quietly, and even though Quinn doesn't mean to—even now, after months of cautious hugs and hesitant affection from Rachel, pulling away remains her first instinct; Rachel, though, stopped caring ages ago—she stiffens the slightest bit. Rachel doesn't pull away, though, but instead tightens her arms the tiniest bit. "And your daughter is going, too. You're going to go to medical school and be a doctor and you're going to make her even more proud of you than she will be to have a famous Broadway star Emmy-Grammy-Oscar-Tony winning aunt-slash-older-sister. She's going to have a family that loves her, even if it's even more unconventional than mine."

"Shut up, Berry, you're going to make me cry," Quinn mutters, but she's smiling, and it doesn't feel cautious or hesitant or awkward at all to let her head tip to the side, temple pressing against Rachel's. She feels Rachel's laughter more than she hears it, and her smile broadens when Sam, shouting victoriously as he gets Finn into a headlock, flashes a happy smile her way.

"I always told you, you know," Rachel says are a moment.

"What?" Her eyes are still lingering on Sam as he tries to ward off Mike's attack while still keeping Finn in the headlock.

"You're a pretty girl, Quinn," Rachel says. Quinn stiffens again, because the words strike a chord to a memory she doesn't want to consider, but Rachel continues. "But you've always been a lot more than that." The words are even heavier than they were the first time, and something feels different about them—it might be Rachel's chin on her shoulder, or arms wrapped around her stomach, or the way her own hands are resting over Rachel's forearms comfortably and her head is back to leaning almost intimately against Rachel's; she's almost terrified to try and consider what the difference actually is—but she just breathes in deeply and tightens her grip on Rachel's arms.

At home, a flash drive with a recording for the child whose laughter she can hear even now, over the sounds of the wrestling match in front of her, sits reverently next to her computer. No one but Rachel and Quinn know it exists, and she hasn't felt the need to give it to Shelby on Beth's behalf since it was decided that Quinn would go to Columbia.

Sinking back even more comfortably into Rachel's embrace, she thinks—cautiously, for the first time ever, but even then still with a tinge of optimism that's new to her mindset and entirely Rachel's fault—that maybe she can wait and just tell everything to Beth herself.

* * *

><p><em>I—I—well, I can't sing as well as your mom, or Rachel—I'm sure you'll know who she is by the time you listen to this—no one can sing as well as them. But there was this song from an album that P—your dad used to play, when I was pregnant with you. It's from when we were younger, and this kind of angry rock band, this group called Sum 41, but it's actually a really nice song, and even before you were born, it made me think of you. I guess most people would classify it as—romantic, or something, but the first time I heard it, I was six months pregnant and all I ever thought about was you and how you were something good I could bring into the world and how much of it I wanted to show you.<em>

_I think the reason I was never able to forget this song was because of how it made me feel when I was pregnant. Well, I mean, not how it made me feel, but how it put how I felt into words. Because even then, when my parents had kicked me out and I didn't really have any friends and I was terrified of the fact that there was this _life _growing inside of me that I was responsible for, that I had created, I already loved you more than anything else. Even when you were making me throw up all the time, or making me crave asparagus—which I had _never _liked before—or when I couldn't sleep because I was the size of a planet. I loved you then, and I love you now, and I always will, Beth. So, I wanted you to have this song, from me, so you'll always know that, okay? Even though I know I tend to be a little sharp sometimes, because not all of us have perfect pitch like your mom, I hope that it—that you can understand that, despite all of the bad choices I've made in my life, you were never one of them and you'll forever be the most incredibly perfect thing I ever did._


End file.
